ZestMoney raises $13.4 million in series A2 funding led by Xiaomi

After months of speculation, Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has invested USD 13.4 million in an extended Series A round of funding in Bangalore-based online lending startup ZestMoney.

According to several reports published by Moneycontrol and other publications, Xiaomi has been in advanced stages of picking up a stake in Zest Money since April this year. The funding, led by Xiaomi, also saw participation from its existing investors PayU, Ribbit Capital, and Omidyar Network.

“We also want to expand use cases for the core ZestMoney Affordability Product - making it the digital consumer's preferred lifestyle financing solution. We are very excited to have Xiaomi as a new investor in the company given the success they have had in building digital credit products in China,” said Lizzie Chapman, co-founder and Chief Executive officer of ZestMoney.

ZestMoney has been closely working with Xiaomi to launch its finance product to enable Mi customers to buy smartphones with a cardless EMI option. The company also aligns with other digital consumer partners such as Amazon, Flipkart, UpGrad and Zefo.

Founded in 2015 by Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman, ZestMoney enables instant account opening and real-time credit approval, combined with digital loan servicing and repayments technology.

ZestMoney intends to use the funding to further strengthen its technology, data science capabilities and to expand market. The company plans to expand its product portfolio to travel and healthcare sectors. It is also working on several additional flexible credit products to address niche funds requirements of its potential users.

The company processes over 300K applications per month and more than 30 million disbursals every day, the company claims. The company is targeting to reach a total disbursal rate of Rs 3,000 crore by December 2018.

The lending platform recently acquired PhotographAI, a platform offering artificial intelligence as a service platform for an undisclosed amount. Through PhotographAI’s computer vision tools, ZestMoney can infuse features onto its own platform to help the system recognise objects in images.

The company had last raised USD 6.5 million funding in February 2017. It picked up seed funding of USD 2 million in 2015.